Herbert Mayrhofer (1943-2019), Engineer and CEO of MHM.

Mayrhofer was arguably the most brilliant engineer in the screenprinting technologies. He designed the MHM press in the early 1980s and set the standard for automatic presses. The MHM press quickly grew to be accepted as gold standard for automatic textile presses worldwide.

In 1993, MHM hired Thomas Fröhlich. Fröhlich came to believe that the future lay in digital imaging. While Fröhlich believed that the future market for screenprinting machines were going to decrease, or at best become stagnant, as the digital market would grow.

“There will always be a need for more printed goods; the world is growing, so you need more shirts. I think the growth will be covered by digital. That doesn’t mean that we won’t sell any more screen printing machines though. The screen printing world is producing special effects with different inks – rubber inks, silicone inks – and this is only possible using screen printing. As long as the main manufacturers want to use special inks, then screen printing will be alive. I’m not scared that in the next five years screen printing machine sales will go down; they will stay at this level, however digital will grow, definitely.” ~ Thomas Fröhlich

In 2001, MHM joined with the Italian company Arioli Group, a producer of digital products. This partnering resulted in MHM’s own digital solution, the Digital Bridge. The solution is made by Arioli, having been taken from the ArioPrint, its digital roll-to-roll textile printing machine. Using technology and electronics that had already been tried and tested on another machine offered MHM a headstart with its hybrid, as the design team didn’t have to start the process from scratch.

In mid-2007, Mayrhofer founded DIGOTEX GmbH, in Kufstein, Austria. DIGOTEX operated on almost the same area as MHM in the the development, production and distribution of print and special machines.

By 2012, facing medical problems from kidney disease, Mayrhofer, retired from the daily operations of running MHM and appointed Thomas Fröhlich as CEO of MHM. DIGOTEX declared bankruptcy in 2012, as well.

In March 2018, after 7 years in Arioli Group, MHM was enquired by L`fficiency Holding GmbH, the German owner of the Tesoma brand, known mainly as a textile dryer manufacturer.

Mayrhofer passed away in Kufstein, Austria in 2019 after battling kidney disease for some time.

Updated July 2019